Posted by Peter Ceresole on September 17, 2006 at 15:42:38 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Beckfoot water supply posted by John Wilson on September 17, 2006 at 14:36:28:
Taqui Altounyan described Lanehead in Chapter 14 of "In Aleppo Once"
I'd love to read that, but our local library can't get hold of it. I should try Amazon...
and from memory she said that the kitchen relied on a hand pump, presumably from a well. If so, would water have to be carried upstairs to the bedrooms and bathroom?
Well, in PM, my impression was that that was the set up at Beckfoot. It seems to me that at that time, and that far away from Coniston or Windermere (or anywhere sizeable) they wouldn't have had a mains water supply. I imagine that in the '20s, with the low population densities in the Lake District, the sewerage would have been either straight into the lake (via the river, maybe) or into a soakaway, or even more technically, into a septic tank. All those would have been common enough at the time. Septic tanks are still widely installed and used; we have one in Switzerland and it works superbly.